Battle of the Appalachians
|conc= |next=Eventually the Battle of Palmyra |name=Battle of the Appalachians |conflict=Knight War |date=20 June, 1936 |place=Appalachian Mountains |result=*Decisive U.S. Government victory **Captain Sierra Hale taken into government custody **The Prematurity is scuttled to prevent the government from capturing it **The Devastator, the last Super Exterminator in the Mettan Fleet, is lost **Signing of International Concordance by the Knights of Metta, thus ending the war |side1=*U.S. Government *Police |side2=Legions of Metta |side3= |side4= |commanders1=*Fleet Admiral Neal Acarr *General Carlist Rieekan |commanders2=*Lord Smasa *Captain Sierra Hale |commanders3= |commanders4= |forces1=*U.S. Government Skyfleet **CR90 corvettes''Star Wars Battlefront'' ***Unidentified government corvette† **EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigates **ER-75 medium transports **MC60 cruisers ***''Freedom's Dawn†''The Super Babies: Complete Locations **KP X-90 skyfighters **BT-1 G-40 interceptors **P-80 skyfighters ***Corona Squadron **1 Cerona light freighter *Government Defense Army |forces2=*Knights of Metta **Altitude Rich Armored Barges ***''Hellhound One† The Super Babies: Jonathan's Survival Guide'' **Altitude Rich Scouting Vessels **Galetroop Corps ***Galetroops *Mettan Navy **1 ''Executor''-class Venom Dreadnaught ***''Devastator''† **''Mettan''-class Supreme Exterminators ***''Prematurity''† ***''Interrogator† **Unidentified twenty-gun raiders **TL skyfighters **TL interceptors **[[Lelda-class V-4f shuttle|''Lelda-class V-4f shuttles]] |forces3= |forces4= |casual1=*Many P-80 wingers *Many CR90 Corvettes *Many GR-75 medium transports *Many MC80 star cruisers **''Freedom's Dawn'' *Many BT-1 G-40 wingers *Many X-90 fighters *Many EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigates *Many police officers |casual2=*Many Mettan-class Supreme Exterminators **''Prematurity'' **''Interrogator'' *1 Executor-class Venom Dreadnaught **''Devastator'' *Many TL skyfighter *Many Knights of Metta |casual3 |casual4= |civilian=}} The Battle of the Appalachians served as the decisive last stand of the Legions of Metta and final large-scale battle of the Knight War over a year after Gorn's demise, and was fought between the depleted forces of the Legions of Metta and the government. Prelude In 1935, the Legions of Metta were drastically weakened after Sheriff Bullseye's legendary defeat of Lord Gorn, his former Master and Dark Lord of Metta. The police celebrated their victory, believing the fight to be won. Nevertheless the police, as well as the Government Defense Army, would still be engaged in bloody combat against the remaining forces of Metta in the year following Gorn's death. Following the Liberation of Helena, Lord Smasa brought the last Supreme Exterminator under Mettan control, the Devastator, as well as most of, if not the entirety of, the remaining Metta fleet to the Appalachian Mountains. The battle The battle of the Appalachian Mountains occurred on 20 June, 1936, 369 days after the duel between Sheriff Bullseye and Lord Gorn. With the government aiming to capture a critical sector in the Knight War and receiving intelligence of a Mettan weapons facility in the mountains, the Legions of Metta readily dismissed the notion of a government victory and sent a large portion of its now depleted Navy to combat the police over control of the mountains in a battle that could change the course of the war. Due to the Legions' martial defeats across the world, along with severe depletion of its military reserves, the barely settled mountains would serve as a rallying point for the Order's shattered forces. With the Legions of Metta's command of many of the world's major shipyards, both the police and government forces planned a bold move to capture the Supreme Exterminator Prematurity, sending Lord Thole, Mazie Idele and a number of former Knights to board the ship and disable its hyperdrive and self-destruct mechanism, due to their knowledge of Super Exterminator layouts. The battle would soon begin as government warships and police skyfighters initiated an intense assault. The battle, while tactically in the Legions' advantage from the beginning soon turned into a rout, with government soldiers assaulting the concentrated Mettan positions from multiple sides at once both on the ground and in the air. With the Knights no longer having the martial advantage it once had in the previous years, flawed tactics as much as leadership gnawed away at their victory. With Dark Lord Sierra Hale of the Prematurity about to contact Lord Smasa to suggest splitting up the fleet to combat the government sky cruisers from multiple angles, as well as sending twenty-gun raiders into the sky to support the robotic fighters in orbit, her ship was suddenly boarded by police officers. With no choice, the commander of the vessel attempted to activate the ship's self-destruct, only to discover that the boarders had disabled it. Seeing no other option, as well as seeing a way to leave the Empire she disliked while keeping her oath, Hale ordered her crew to evacuate and then scuttled the ship by crashing the Super Exterminator onto the bottom of the mountain, sending shockwaves across the region. However before the crash, Lord Thole stunned her, probably via lightning, and managed to carry her to an escape pod before the Prematurity crashed, bringing the Dark Lord and miraculously his former lover into government custody. With the battle turning against the Legions of Metta, Mettan ships began entering the mountain region in order to tighten their cordon, unleashing an irrational defense to prevent the government from capturing its secret research facility below. In a last-ditch effort, crippled Mettan ships began utilizing their tractor beams to drag government vessels into the sides of the mountains. Upon impact with the stone, nearly the entire populations of the falling ships would perish. The battle soon ended when word of a peace treaty, the International Concordance, was signed. Nonetheless, the retreating Knights ultimately managed to destroy their research base and weapons facility before jumping into the Unknown Countries. The battle had ended in a decisive defeat for the Legions of Metta. During the battle, Smasa wrote a long letter via computer to remember the battle. It would later be recovered by Baby Intelligence. Aftermath Geopolitical impact With the battle ending with a victory for the government soon after the signing of the International Concordance, Lord Sierra Hale wondered whether the Knights' plans for making a stand at the Appalachians were betrayed by Smasa in a power play, as well as believing that outdated battle tactics played a part in the Legions' defeat. With the old strategy calling for a concerted, simultaneous effort by all ships engaged in combat and controlled by a central command, the lack of martial resources and effective leadership played a key role in the Legions of Metta's surrender. Police attacks on Mettan flanks also proved fatal and contributed to heavy Mettan losses. Over a month following the battle, the Legions of Metta did not attempt to instigate any other large-scale offensives with the government. The exhausted Order would be bound by the punitive treaty, forcing it to order all Mettan vessels located in the known world to remain within pre-determined boundaries, as well as cede their headquarters over to the government. Harsh war reparations and severe restrictions on its military capabilities effectively turned the fractured Knights into a rump state. With the treaty signed, a few prominent members of the Senate believed that the government's conflict with the Knights was nearing its end and that the Empire's total capitulation was imminent. Wreckage and conspiracy theories In the decades after the battle, the Appalachians' desert landscape was still littered with wreckage from the battle in an area known as the Graveyard of Giants, with the fallen Exterminator-class Star Devastator and Star Cruisers of both sides littering the landscape. Despite most ships having crashed in the Graveyard, wrecked fighters, warships and miscellaneous debris could be found in several different locales. Survivors of the battle who ejected from a fighter or came down in an escape pod often wandered the mountains in search of inhabited settlements. With the Appalachians' nearly non-existent population at the time, many died of exposure wandering the mountains, or starved to death in caves, becoming carrion for ripper-raptors. As a result, the region became littered with bodies, and the bones of fallen soldiers still in uniform strapped to ejector seats or stuck under wreckage littered locales from Fera's Point to the Spike. While the moving sands of the Sinking Fields often exposed crashed ships for a short time before burying them once more. Lifeforms such as woodpeckers would break down metals in the crashed starships, while transplanted creatures and parasites from the battle would stubbornly find a place in the desert ecology. After the establishment of Vang Outpost, an entire economy would be established based on the foraging of valuable technology in the Graveyard, with local junk boss Jaden Vang controlling a monopoly over the business from his base at Vang Outpost following his father's death at the hands of a bounty hunter. As a result, many stories would circulate over the origins of the wreckage and the battle that was fought, with many local residents falsely claiming to have been present when the ships fell. Most Mettan ships were noted by locals to have suffered considerable battle damage, while some government ships did not. To some, this gave further credence to the tractor beam theory of how some of the ships crashed on the surface. The result of washing table gossip, one theory as to why the Legions put up such a fervent defense was to protect a secret research base under the central mountain. This theory was supported by the presence of wide-eyed, bearded old men known as dead-enders nearly a century years after the battle, with dead-enders throwing rocks and babbling strings of numbers while chasing scavengers away. Some believed that the old men were actually former Knights guarding their secret base owing to them wearing scraps of old Mettan armor. Others such as the scavenger Jonathan, believed that a Mettan warship came down on the ridge instead of crashing into the Graveyard, with the surviving officers sending out their followers to secure the crashsite while they waited for a rescue, only to have a giant rockslide bury the ship, leaving the troopers there guarding nothing. It was a known fact to locals that Jaden Vang became irritated when mentioning the fight. Legacy Decades later, the battle would be taught as one of the last major stands of the Legions of Metta within the government educational system. Additionally, a Mettan artifact collector would name himself after the battle, going under the pseudonym 'Avenger of the Appalachians'. Fifty-four years after the battle, the Pummeller piloted by officers Jean and Bladepoint would fight against several N-54 robotic fighters over the wreckage. Some individuals such as Jonathan, a male scavenger, scavenged through the old battlefront with his speeder bike and maintained a destroyed cruiser as his home. Decades later, an abandoned government corvette carrying secret information coveted by both the Legions of Metta and the government during the battle was discovered. It would become the focus of a group of scavengers to retrieve this information. Behind the scenes The Battle of the Appalachians were first revealed in 2011 in . The battle was later elaborated on , and became one of the most read writings on the website to date. However, it is still unclear why Smasa created the letter at all. Appearances * * * * Notes and references Appalachians Category:Battles of the Knight War Category:1936 events